Mitigation

March 2009: The Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) will hold a workshop on Climate Change Science and Technology Advice for the GEF Fifth Replenishment (GEF5) on 30 March 2009, in Washington, DC, US. The objective of the workshop is to develop scientific and technical guidance for GEF5 programming on climate mitigation policies and technologies to respond effectively to recent scientific, technical and policy evidence.

March 2009: The World Bank, in collaboration with the French Agency for Development, the Global Gas Flaring Reduction Initiative and the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency, is organizing the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Carbon Forum, scheduled to convene from 6-7 May 2009, in Cairo, Egypt.

March 2009: The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), together with the European Water Partnership, the Dutch Ministry for Transport and Public Works, the World Water Council and the Cooperative Programme on Water and Climate, is organizing a Conference on Climate Change Adaptation and Water, which will take place from 12-13 March 2009, in Brussels, Belgium.

27 February 2009: The Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting (IPM) for the 17th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD17) took place from 23-27 February 2009, at UN Headquarters in New York, US. The IPM's role was to provide a forum to discuss policy options and possible actions to enable the implementation of measures and policies concerning agriculture, rural development, land, drought, desertification and Africa – the thematic issues under consideration during the CSD16/CSD17 two-year “implementation cycle.”

27 February 2009: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has released a study titled “Wood from Planted Forests.” The study underscores the critical role that planted forests play in securing future wood supply and in providing other ecosystem services. The report underscores that the importance of planted forests will increase in the future, given their ability to sequester carbon and contribute other services, such as soil and water conservation.

27 February 2009: The annual Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Partnership Forum, which took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in February 2009, offered the ECA and its development partners the opportunity to exchange views and provide an update on ongoing initiatives, as well as to showcase new ones. This year's discussion was dominated by the African climate change initiative, a programme initiated in 2006 and led by the Climate Information for Development in Africa (ClimDev Africa) programme – a joint partnership between the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank and the ECA.

26 February 2009: In a lecture titled “Dealing with a Changing World - African Solutions to Africa's Challenges,” delivered in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon underlined that Africa will be particularly affected by climate change. He also recalled that he had declared 2009 the year of climate change, both because of the Copenhagen Conference in December and because of the need for a global green new deal to address the economic crisis.

25 February 2009: According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), humanitarian needs related to particularly high levels of displacement due to conflict and natural disasters are severe.